Traditional containers, capsules or vessels of various styles and made from many different materials have for many years been utilized under the term ‘time capsules’ and have in a general sense been used extensively in the prior art. The general premise of a ‘time capsule’ is that items of significance or value are placed in an internal void of the container, subsequently temporarily sealed and then buried or stored for a predetermined period of time. Once the predetermined period of time has lapsed the time capsule is intended to be then opened so as to reveal the contents from within the internal void. Commonly, a time capsule contains items of particular relevance at the time of being buried such that the person opening the capsule in the future will gain knowledge and understanding of past community history. However, it is understood that in a broad sense a ‘time capsule’ can be regarded as a container for storing at least one object chosen to be of relevance to only the depositor and then stored or buried for an indefinite period of time with no intended future discovery date.
There is no doubt that the art of sealing objects of historical or cultural interest in traditional conveniently available containers has been well known and practiced throughout history. For example, the ancient Egyptians culturally believed that preserving and mummifying parts of the body and subsequently storing the same in urns was a manner in which immortality and/or heavenly ascension could be achieved. The problem was however, although the urns were protected by strong underground tombs the Egyptians failed in this endeavour partly because the containers had high value to tomb robbers, who after disposing of the original contents, sold (recycled) the urns on to other users for the same purpose.
In present day culture it is commonly known to use carefully crafted and intricate containers or urns for depositing the remains of deceased loved ones as a memorial for grieving relatives. (i.e. ashes from a cremation) A problem associated with this type of memorial storage technique is that crematoriums have been known to often confuse the ashes of different persons whereby relatives are not in fact provided with the remains of their particular loved-ones. While these types of containers are intended to contain an item of significant sentimental value they are all by their traditional use configuration designed to be reopened, therefore in no instance are those containers capable of being sealed permanently for extremely long periods of time and thus are short term time-capsule examples of containers used to temporarily house the contents until recycling, therefore not considered as authentic long duration, single use only, time-capsules.
All currently available prior art have similar removable stopper/lid/cover arrangements in that they are specifically designed to be opened intact to remove the contents and therefore capable of being reused for a similar purpose. Which is a critically important security problem associated with them. Other problems associated with these other containers include their susceptibility to, corrosion, seal leakage, breakage of external lips, rims, spouts, edges, and other protrudences, ease of access enabling casual tampering, theft due to the high recycle value of the expensive material they are made from and degradation over time when exposed to harsh environments, as such they do not offer sufficient extremely long term protection of the internal contents of the container.
Recent decades have shown tremendous advances in the field of medical sciences, which has subsequently resulted in the development of increasingly advanced cloning techniques. Since then there is a common perception among the community that future technologies will develop the ability to clone a full human being or other animals from a biological sample comprising viable DNA. This perception itself has already resulted in the storing of various biological specimens and DNA material from human and other various life forms in commercial industrial type facilities commonly called ‘cryogenic facilities’ which preserve the samples using expensive to operate freezing methods. The problem with this method of storage is on-going service costs charged by these cryogenic storage facilities because they consume huge amounts of energy and are extremely expensive to operate and are therefore economically restricted to governments and/or extremely wealthy individuals. They are clearly not intended to be for private use, and have relatively short facility operational life as they are only viable while electrical power and human attendants are available to run and to maintain the refrigeration equipment containing the samples, which in relation to time may only be a century at best or until the money paid to store the samples ceases.
Prior art containers and time capsules, funeral urns and similar containers are commonly significantly expensive, as they are made of materials such as aluminium, stainless steel, lead or other valuable metals. Moreover, such prior art receptacles are clearly designed to be reopened and reused or recycled after a predetermined period of time has lapsed. Therefore, there is a need for an alternative container for private individuals to store at least one biological sample or a sample donated from a person and/or persons, if possible still living, wishing to store the same for an indefinite or prolonged period of time. Where the container is fabricated from a relatively low cost, low recycle value material and is permanently sealed in a manner in which the container cannot be reused by anyone else in the future. In fact the only way in which to open the container, once sealed by the original owner, will be to break open the container itself, thus destroying any chance of reuse. It is envisaged the only reason to break open the container in the future will be that the opener intentionally intends to use the DNA contents for cloning or for legal proof of linage. Specifically, it is recognized that for such a container to achieve the purpose of acting as a time capsule for a person wishing to store a sample of their and/or their loved ones DNA in the hope of future regeneration it must have qualities that detract and avoid potential future destruction of both the container and DNA samples caused by the container being recycled for the material it's made from and/or reused by another person in the future. The container must therefore be of relatively no value to anyone else, (even as scrap value), contain no monetary valuables, nor information detailing the DNA donors prior identity and must clearly not be able to be opened without totally destroying the sealing capability of the container therefore rendering the container irreparable and useless to anyone in the future who simply wants to sell it on or reuse it for their own similar time capsule purposes.